


The Agent's New Clothes

by florahart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, clint is bad at adulting, get-together, inhibition-lifting drugging, not AOS/Ultron compliant, there's no actual porn here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 11:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18776935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: Clint burns his tongue, there's a mission to be had, and ...oh yeah, Coulson is bare-ass naked in the briefing.Sure, this is probably going to end well.





	The Agent's New Clothes

**Author's Note:**

> So someone somewhere was talking about bulletproof aspects of stories they love, and there was a thing about characters being vicariously embarrassed by someone else being revealed in some way ...or something. Anyway, that was the genesis of this story.
> 
> Please do let me know if you think there is something that needs a tag; please also feel free to offer up typo observations if you like.

Clint knows it's going to be a bad day when he burns his mouth on his coffee because he didn't have any jelly and usually he pours, jellies the toast, then drinks, but there was no jellying time today and even though this has only happened the last approximately 97 times he was out of jelly (which happens often because jelly is awesome and he is definitely not a six year old for occasionally just putting some on a spoon with some peanut butter and eating that without bread. Possibly twice.) he never remembers that until after he burns his tongue.

Hey shut up, it's his apartment and no one else really counts on eating his food so he can get mouth and/or peanut butter germs in his jelly if he wants to.

Also it is deeply unfair that one of the approximately one non-work things in his life that is routine-ized like the pour-jelly-sip protocol betrays him in this way because he is given to understand that adulting involves a lot of making and keeping to routines, like, say, paying bills when they are due and doing laundry on a schedule and so on. He thinks this is not a very good motivation to improve at standard adulting.

Also also let's be real: there are a lot of ways Clint starts a day that let him know it's going to be a bad day because he is just not a very fortunate person; on the plus side he's not out of ice to suck on for his burned tongue. 

Sadly, he _is_ out of bandaids, which he needs because he forgot he had a knife hidden in the ice holder thing, which means he bleeds on his single unjellied toast which was the last piece of bread, so since even he has standards about eating bread with human blood on it even though obviously he has swallowed some of his own blood in his life due to events such as being punched in the face by assholes, the upshot is that he only had about eighty percent of a piece of toast. Unjellied. With his burnt tongue.

Yes. Shitty day, incoming, no question.

–

And then 7:15 am happens.

Okay, so 7:15 am is not a time people should have to be up. Clint _can_ be up; he's kind of the definition of disrupted sleep pattern and as he is in his thirties now he expects this is probably just a feature of his life that isn't up for much debate. However, in a perfect world if he woke up at seven he would just consider his options and then immediately roll over and go back to sleep. 

But, 6-to-7:30 am is a popular time frame for pre-op meetings to start.

Clint thinks this is probably mostly so whoever is the AIC on a particular op can take attendance, because usually they have the meeting and then it's like, okay people, wheels up in 4 hours, get your go-bag packed, and like, the whole point of the go-bag is that you can just GO, so it should take however long it takes to sprint to your locker and grab it. Which is about a minute and a half, depending which conference room and how many people are in the way (Clint has checked his speed on several occasions), so like, why not have this meeting at ten or eleven, when they have two or three more hours of intel in the first place so they won't have to all read ginormous multi-aspect update packets on the plane? Ugh.

So he's considering the fuckery that is middle management's unadvertised roll-call mechanism (and about how his tongue feels itchy and weird) when he turns the corner into the conference room at, give or take, 7:14:59.85 am

And here is when he works out the day is also going to be weird. 

Like, bad weird.

"Uh. Boss?" he says in the general direction of Coulson, who is sitting at the far end of the table, bare-chested and, if Clint is not seeing things, which being unjellied and tongueburnt and scabbyfingered has never caused before so it's not that, also bare of foot and shin. And it's not like Clint has an objection to the concept of an introduction to Coulson's bare body because hey that crush is probably old enough to drive in most states plus DC, but he feels like there's about a zeroish percent chance this is the setting in which that ought to happen. In a way that is more zeroey than the zero area under any given point on a probability curve because points don't have dimension, zero. And also he has no reason to think it's a thing that is actually supposed to be happening in the first place. Fuck. "Coulson?"

"Yes, my love?"

So bad, weird, _and freaking confusing_. Perfect. Clint looks around at the nine other agents in the room, all of whom are either smirking, hiding a snicker, or obliviously (or fake-obliviously) poking their phones.

And none of whom seem to have thought they maybe should point out to Coulson that he is _not wearing clothes_.

"Guys, what the fuck."

Ratzchenkawski looks up from his phone. "One million miles above my pay grade," he says very quietly.

"Plus he likes you. He should hear from you, not us," Giantelli says. "I mean, not like. I don't mean what he just said, just, always he takes it better from you. I mean. Um." She blushes. "Anyway but I mean probably you're right, but just, how do you..." 

"You act like a goddamn adult agent of the most highly-trained intelligence agency we have?" Clint's a little torn between just handling this anyway, and using the moment, which it's still possible is actually some kind of training exercise and Coulson is naked on purpose. Or wearing a g-string, which concept Clint is going to now quietly put away behind a closed and triple-locked door in his brain because nnngh. 

Wait, see previous regarding adulting prowess; how is it he is the person in this room advocating for acting like a goddamn adult?

…shit. Being in his thirties is the literal _worst_.

Anyway, though, it seems a little unlikely Coulson wouldn't have warned him if he was supposed to be playing some kind of role in an exercise, and since he's the only one here who seems to think this situation needs attention, he's pretttttty sure he's not the one at whom any such exercise would be aimed. He hopes. Maybe. Probably. 

Giantelli nods and straightens her spine, turning in Coulson's direction. Jacobson elbows Park and gestures toward her; Clint glares at them both. "Um, sir?" she says.

"You'll need to wait until after I see to Barton's needs," Coulson says. "His needs are always paramount in my schedule."

Jacobson and Park snicker some more and Giantelli looks at Clint and rolls her eyes, which he approves of because those two're both kind of asshats. "Well, you tried," he tells her. He says, a little louder, to the room at large, "This briefing is rescheduled to ten am. Check your texts ahead of time to confirm location. That will be all."

That sounds like a professional and normal thing to say, right? 

No one gives him any crazy side-eye or looks like he just announced it was chicken dance time in the morgue, so he's going to just assume it was and try to get on with his day.

Jacobson and Park make little stupid fistpump gestures and say something that must be about a game? Or something. It sounds like a code, but Clint figures this means they're going to play some kind of phone or ...is Gameboy still a thing? Anyway, something for two and a half hours, because obviously this is what people who are level 4 or 5 completely do at every opportunity. 

Shut up, he is also bad at adulting but at least on the job he makes efforts that are sort of approximately consistent with what he understands to be maturity? Like announce stuff and handle weird fucking situations where he's getting the ickyfeels from his clearly-disturbed boss.

Not, like, ickyfeels like said boss's _fault_. About the disturbedness. Which is disturbing. Anyway.

Giantelli collects her laptop and a pen and legal pad, then hustles everyone who hasn't already gone from the room. She looks back, eyebrows raised in question, and Clint makes a mental note to tell Coulson, or, uh. Or whoever is in charge if Coulson has lost his fucking mind? Just, someone. To tell someone who seems like a grownup who should be told about potential and stuff that she was ready to hang back and problem-solve what is showing all signs of becoming a clusterfuck of epic proportion even though he'd just given her a couple hours of free time, and then he nods briefly at her and waves her off, closing the door behind her.

"Sir, just out of curiosity, are you aware you are bare-ass naked in a mission briefing? Unnecessarily?"

This is where Coulson could stand up and demonstrate he's not. Maybe the g-string has a Captain America shield on it? 

But no.

No, today is bad, weird, freaking confusing, and _also terrifying_ , because what he does is look at Clint and say, "No, I'm wearing the new camo set. Don't you have one?"

"Does it camouflage you as nakedbutt AIC right down to the freckles?" Clint asks, to buy a little time because the implication here is that Coulson _thinks he is wearing clothes when he demonstrably is not_ and the first-blush implication of _that_ is that he's been some kind of compromised. And Clint is 5000% not okay with that. At all.

"No, it bends the light around the chair. You're just seeing an optical illusion."

"Uh...huh."

"It's really light. Thin, very comfortable..."

"...totally invisible?"

"If I put on the hood you wouldn't be able to see me at all. Even you."

"Huh. Well, let's. Um. Okay, so two things. First, let's see if we can prove that."

Coulson reaches up to where a hood would rest at the join of his neck and his shoulders, and makes like he's grasping something, which he flicks up over his head. "See?"

Clint takes out his phone and takes a picture, then turns the screen to Coulson. "See? There you are." 

Coulson shakes his head and pushes the chair back to stand.

Yep, full naked.

"That's just that you already knew where I was. Go out and come back in in ten seconds. If you can still find me, we'll talk."

Clint stares at him for a lot longer than is reasonable – not like that. It's not, it's _not_ , that he's memorizing naked Coulson, although that is also happening because, well. Hawkeye. Just, he can't believe his ears and what the actual fuck. But, okay, sure. He goes out the door, closes it, waits ten seconds by his watch, and goes back in.

Coulson is crouched _on_ the table, balls dangling below his ass (shut _up_ , brain, what are you doing noticing that right now), facing to the side and apparently holding his breath.

Clint takes a picture and turns the screen, but apparently Coulson thinks it's a lucky guess? So… okay. Okay, this is not sane and also arguably it's inappropriate but Clint figures if there's anything a guy predictably and consistently trusts and protects, it's his balls. So he walks alongside the table and literally grabs Coulson by the balls. Briefly. Just long enough to say, "Sir, you are absolutely visible, entirely naked, and just in case that isn't enough, you're for some fucking reason calling me your love in the context of a briefing." He lets go. "I am completely, no question, no doubt, positive something is fucking with your head which is definitely a problem for the impending op but also is a problem, in general."

"But you are."

"I am sure? Yes, yes I am."

"No, the other thing."

Clint rolls back his previous statement. "I am your… okay sir, this has got to stop. We're going to find you some non-invisible clothes, and then we are going to go see Dr. Ramirez."

" _Camouflage._ This is not the same as invisible."

"Or the same as non-existent, and yet." Clint puts up his hands. "Fine. You have invisible camo clothes I can see through and you are wearing them. Look, I know it might be uncomfortably warm and all, but we can't have other people bumping into you while we walk. Plus, what if not all the door hardware recognizes your presence?"

Coulson thinks about that moment, then pushes the (not-a-)hood off his head and says, "But now it will."

Clint stifles a groan. "Well, will you do it because I want you to? If I'm your, you know, your love and all and your priority is meeting my needs?" Saying this string of words seems like a pretty great way to get a heart attack, but he's a spy and a professional and he does it anyway.

"In that case." Coulson unzips a zipper that isn't there, steps out of trousers he isn't wearing, and peels away the vest or hoodie or whatever the shit he thinks is covering his torso. "Shoes too?"

"Shoes too. Let's leave the socks and, um, is there underwear?"

"Of course. I'm not a _heathen_."

"I see. All right, well, so let's leave those on and bring the rest for, um, for R&D to examine. Meanwhile, here." Clint pulls his own t-shirt over his head and hands it over, then considers for a second and sighs. Fuck. Hawkeye in boxer briefs roaming the halls is not a story he wants to start, but it's better than bare-ass Coulson. At least he is actually _wearing_ underwear today; sometimes he's, like, not that caught up with the laundry. He steps out of his own (actually-camo) uniform pants and gives them to Coulson as well, and sets aside the question of how, exactly, Coulson got all the way to the fucking briefing room like this. "I will be back in less than three minutes. Do you have your watch?"

Coulson holds up his (bare) arm. "Yep."

"Great." Whatever, if he believes it's there maybe he'll watch three actual minutes elapse on it. "Three minutes. Start the clock when I leave, but _stay here_."

"Will do." Coulson looks Clint up and down. "Although I don't really want anyone else to see you like that."

 _You and me both, man,_ Clint thinks, meaning both his own ass and Coulson's, but all he does is shrug. "Probably everyone's seen me in a worse state by now. What with all the robot-octopus slime and things catching on fire and all that's like, just part of Tuesday these days."

Coulson nods soberly and Clint goes to the door. "Right. Ready? Start the timer."

He sprints for his go-bag in his locker, flipping off Janssen, who wolf-whistles, and hollering, "Later, fill you in later," at Hill, who scowls. On his way back he sends a somewhat breathless voice-text to Ramirez and gives that asshole Dearborne his best murderface, which, satisfyingly, does make Dearborne flinch. Probably he should just look at him that way from now on.

He's back in the room in two minutes nineteen seconds with his bag (which holds two sets of spare everything along with a whooole lot of other tech toys that do cool shit, still none of which is invisible camouflage clothing). 

Coulson, of course, is not present.

Clint closes his eyes, swears a _lot_ , like, a _Fury_ lot, with creativity and passion, and pulls on sweatpants and a hoodie, then updates Ramirez real quick and sets out on his search.

Fortunately Coulson is just a couple hundred yards down the hall and around a couple of corners, standing next to one of the pillars that form the ribs of the corridor network. 

Unfortunately, he is once again naked, although when Clint stops in front of him and glares, folding his arms, he steps away from the wall and Clint's clothes hit the floor behind him; he must have had them behind his back.

"So, you put back on your clothes, _through which I can see you?_ " Clint says.

"Just checking." Coulson pulls Clint's clothes back on and goes with him to see Doc Ramirez without further incident.

Or further indecent, which is almost an anagram, and is unfortunately completely relevant to this situation.

Ramirez is waiting when they arrive and restrains Coulson immediately.

Clint hates the necessity, but agrees with the concept. Coulson, on the other hand, is betrayed and angry.

Clint sighs. "Boss, seriously, just let them run the scans."

"I don't have to be tied to a bed for that."

"I know, but since you _did_ just fly the coop when left on your own for a few minutes, well. I'll stay with you, though."

Coulson grumbles for a full minute more, but eventually settles and lets himself be laid back on the bed. Ramirez moves some kind of portable scanner into place and says, "Phil, tell me about these clothes."

The story Coulson tells more or less makes sense: a guy who gave his name as Jenkins, down in the quartermaster's office, gave Coulson the new duds to try out earlier this morning (this answers the question of how he got into the SHIELD offices but introduces the new question of how this Jenkins character made it through the vetting process and onto the team), and since trying out new field material is common enough, that's what he's doing, as far as he knows. Coulson insists there was no exchange other than the clothes, though, so the delusion situation is a problem. 

Also, Coulson has a kind of long and super embarrassing story to tell about the ways in which all of this ties back to his undying love of Clint, which Clint would much rather have never ever _ever_ heard, but Ramirez does a pretty credible job of remaining professional and not openly laughing at Clint's uncomfortable discomfort...ed...ness. Clint makes a new mental note for later, along with another one about how to get great at mental notes for days like today that seem to have more notes than he has brain-postits, to learn more about Lifetime Movies, the plots of which come up a surprising number of times during the monologue; he was not aware Coulson was a fan, or that they were a thing, but it seems they feature things like 'fake boyfriends to keep the family happy' and 'long road trips where two people who don't know each other very well fall deeply in love in the four days it takes to drive to Colorado.'

Finally, Ramirez says to Clint, "Hill and Watzowicz know there's a snag because I checked in while you were en route, but you all are still on the clock to leave in a couple of hours. Maybe you go report in, leave this to me?" 

Clint isn't that happy about leaving it to anyone – he said he'd stay – but if nothing else he needs to file some kind of report. He's not sure what this Jenkins asswipe was hoping to accomplish; probably despite everything at _some_ point Coulson would have walked past someone with the intestinal fortitude to question him before they went anywhere? After a little internal back and forth, he nods. "Boss, I'll be back if I can."

"You said you'd stay!" There's the betrayal all over again.

"I know. It's taking a little longer than expected and you know how it is: urgent shit comes up. I'll fill you in later, okay?"

Coulson pouts, which, Clint had never seen an expression that could in any way be called a pout on his face before, and it's both horrifying and hilarious. "Fine, but I want my goodbye kiss now in case you ship out without coming back."

Clint blinks, then glances at Ramirez. Ramirez shrugs and makes some kind of gesture that probably means _it is not my business what weird shit you field guys make a habit of,_ then says, "I need to get a different monitor tape. I'll be back in thirty seconds," and leaves the room.

Coulson holds his hands, five fingers outstretched, toward Clint as far as he can with the restraints, and Clint leans over his legs a little. "Sir, I feel like you might be a little compromised for kissing."

Coulson, who is at least as much of a badass as the rumor mill suggests, grabs him by the t-shirt (what the hell, that hand was restrained two seconds ago!) and drags him down, planting an epic, and kind of devastating, kiss on his mouth and pressing his tongue against Clint's lips to get him to open up. All of this feels weird – on many levels, but specifically because of his fucking coffee burns, but look, that's just an inconvenience and he can be inconvenienced if this is what he gets out of it. Not that it's ever going to happen again because compromised isn't even the word. 

Clint is never going to be okay again, is basically what he thinks when he stands back up just as Ramirez returns. Jesus. "Boss—" He has to stop and clear his throat. "Uh. Boss," he tries again. "I'll be back. You be good for the doc like you always tell me."

Coulson nods sharply and holds up his freed hand for Ramirez to re-restrain. "I'll be good, and I'll look forward to my reward when you get back."

This day is bad, weird, freaking confusing, terrifying, and _also very upsetting_. Also, arousing, but Clint is putting that behind the triple-locked door with the other thing because ajsdfkjsfdal.

He pauses at the threshold for just a second, can't think of anything both appropriate and useful to say, and heads up to operations.

Watzowicz cuts him off as he enters the room. She's basically Hill's deputy, and they work together crazy well mostly, Clint thinks, because they evenly divide between them all the traits of one great human – where Hill is all business, Watzowicz is all heart? Something like that. Not _only_ that but like, they balance each other and respect what the other brings to the table and collectively they are efficiency and goodness all in a neat package. Anyway, she gives him some big eyes and says she gets that this is a mess and he should say if he needs to tap out now so they have time to bring in someone at least half as good. Which, nice play, actually. She _would_ let him off the hook for the gig, honestly, and he knows she'd make sure no one held it against him, but she also gives him a little ego stroke and a little guilt trip in one short sentence at the same time, and he's definitely not tapping out.

It's only 36 hours if they dawdle, and there's no real reason to think Kisumu will be notably different from the last time, plus, that will give Ramirez time to work out what the hell is going on. They reframe the plan for Jellicoe to run as the AIC, but it's going to take a couple more hours for Hill to read him in on everything he actually needs to know to be effective because the Lake Victoria situation has been bouncing between Hill and Coulson as primaries for a couple of years now, and she's tied up tomorrow with (ugh) congressional testimony nonsense that Clint hopes with his entire soul to never participate in, so. They push back their departure time to 1500, put Giantelli on resetting a couple of meets with the locals (good; they already know she's going to be something great when she has a little more wear on her ...tires? Ugh, Clint, that's not how to think of a human, but, eh. The analogy is sound.), and since Clint's go bag is currently divided between his ass and his handler's that's just as well because now he has time to go see someone about this Jenkins fuckhat while he tops up his supplies.

To his total lack of surprise, Jenkins does not exist in the supply chain, nor in R&D, nor in anywhere else.

Which is again not his problem; he texts Ramirez just to loop him in, and tells Hill when he pops his head in to her brief with Jellicoe at 1145, and then he goes to the range to think things through and try to let go of some tension by creating precise perfect holes in shiny new targets.

It's not that successful.

The letting go of tension. The holes are precise and perfect because duh. After a while he packs his shit up and heads for the jets.

They’ve only just taken off when Clint’s phone buzzes, and when he looks, it’s Ramirez. This is the point at which the shitty day expands to encompass other people, because the text is a code only he and Coulson use, and it’s both super troubling that Coulson has to have shared with Ramirez and also the text itself explains why Coulson is off the team, and Clint is pretty glad he’s already deep in murderface mode after it worked so nicely with Dearborne because there’s nothing to give away by scowling.

But now he has to figure out how to convey to at least Giantelli and maybe a couple of others that Kisumu is in fact going to be _very_ different from last time, in that oh hey, Jellicoe is working for someone across the border and guess what, he’s also Jenkins. The text is shy on details, but Ramirez must have found whatever was fucking with Coulson’s head.

And whatever it was came from Jellicoe.

So yeah, that seems great with a capital GR.

He thumbs back an acknowledge with a request for a plaintext update, and gets an innocuous one from Hill. Which, okay. If she’s in the picture on the ground, probably she’s got support coming, but the trouble is, this mission _is_ support for stuff already falling apart, and it’s not like they can just turn the plane around for no reason without tipping their hand, so there’s nothing in the text that helps, except that he now has a legitimate recent text in case anyone goes looking at his phone. He deletes the Ramirez conversation, which will only help if someone’s looking casually but hey, any misdirection is a good misdirection, and moves up to sit next to Park, stretching his legs out long and leaning back in classic _ugh flying takes forever and I hate waiting_ pose.

Park ignores him and after a second pulls out his phone and texts Jacobson, and the content of their back-and-forth answers whether anyone else is in on whatever the shit Jellicoe is doing and also confirms that Park is a fucking _moron_ because hey guess what the person sitting casually next to him is literally famous for seeing things, and can definitely read a damn text from like 31 inches away without looking like he’s leaning in. Jesus.

The best part of this is that it seems like actually taking down Hawkeye is likely to be one of the purposes of including him on this team, and like. Maybe that should have served as a reminder or something? 

Clint ignores the texting and stays stretched out, but casually sets his phone on the bench on the opposite side of him from Park, between his hip and the little piece of bulkhead that juts out at the end of the bench. 

He hopes he has signal that is good enough to do what he hopes, and starts sending messages to Giantelli, sitting across from him with her eyes closed. They have a handful of different messaging mechanisms, some of which do not actually go through central command, and he hopes she’s quick enough to work out that the longer and shorter notification buzzes have meaning. And that she realizes this before taking her phone out of her pocket.

He keeps on eye on her while keeping another on his phone – he doesn’t really need to be able to see it, so much as to have it in his field of vision, and he sees her mouth tighten slightly on recognizing a word, and then relax as he keeps sending. _Don’t pull out your phone. Mission compromised. At least two of team turned._

Because the thing is, if she is also not on his side, then he’s fucked because pretty much everyone else on this team is either an asshole or a probie or both, so.

When he finishes the brief explanation he adds, _confirm_ , and she opens her eyes, yawns, and scratches her nose then bites her lip and looks to her left. Which, like. Nice work; she didn’t even _play_ on the softball team last year and as far as he knows she never even laid eyes on the playbook, but that says curveball low and in, and why yes, this is one, isn’t it.

He blinks at her and purses his lips, and she closes her eyes again.

So he goes back to texting.

In fact, Park and Jacobson are _exactly_ as stupid as Clint had though impossible, and Jellicoe has clearly been failing to pay one fucking bit of attention to any of Clint's skillsets; Clint has Giantelli out of the line of fire before anyone even notices they've arrived, setting her to work on getting their path to be constantly surveilled through a variety of CCTV, ATM cameras, selfies, home security systems, and dash- and bodycams. Then he places himself so he can keep an eye on everyone up close (and shoot preferably Park _and_ Jacobson in a testicle apiece but he'll take _or_ as a consolation prize), and waits for Jellicoe to fuck up.

It's a wait so short Clint almost misses his shot. Well, no, he's not _unconscious and bound_ , but more, he almost fails to see the moment coming because he's used to working with Coulson, who, recent sabotage notwithstanding has _competent_ coming out his pores and hair follicles and stuff, and Jellicoe is probably, on the whole, basically a functional human for most purposes, but by comparison he comes off as about as bright a particularly stupid and angry ram that's tied itself to a fencepost by not remembering it's possible to walk _counter_ -clockwise on the lead _too_.

Happily, he does in fact get to shoot Park in the left nut with a nice piercing blade that does relatively little actual damage but looks like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is continuously occurring in his crotch (his response is extremely satisfying), and then in the melee after he disables Jellicoe and rounds up Ratzchenkawski, who seems mostly super extra confused, he gets to watch Giantelli stomp, like actual knee to chest and slam to the ground, on Jacobson's, which makes his heart happy.

Yeah, fine, it's ultraviolent (ha. Well, it's true). But they both refrained from actually killing any of these asshats before the intel folks get to try to make them explain themselves, so it's gold stars for the chart all around.

He assigns Ratzchenkawski to dope all three of them for the flight home and then fucking sit on them, since he doesn't want Giantelli, whom he has effectively made second in command after himself (the himself part is distressing but what's the other choice) to have to worry about managing an insurrection in the cargo bay, then slaps his own ass behind the stick and takes them, and the retrieved (live, no thanks to the dickbag trio) target as well as four locals who wouldn't probably survive being found to have helped, back to base.

\--

It's just after ten, twenty-seven hours after the start of the fucktastica, when they touch down, and Coulson, dressed in actual camo fatigues, is sitting on a crate with his neatly tied boots crossed one over the other when they do.

Clint's so relieved he's 1. dressed and 2. not in medical so apparently cleared and 3. functional he forgets to key off his mike while he swears about this fucking day; Coulson, who's obviously on the line, twitches his lips in the _I am cackling like a motherfucker on the inside but I have a goddamn reputation to uphold_ way, so he doesn't really mind his mistake.

Except for how Giantelli, who is _not_ a probie but who _is_ young and maybe (and thinking this makes Clint feel weird and geriatric and confused about why, again, he has bandaids and tongueburn) impressionable and stuff but anyway she's great and he wants her to do well but she might think it's fine to be Hawkeye-level loose if she doesn't realize he gets away with shit because his eyes and his carnie ass make people make excuses for him? and like, he's down with everyone getting that same kind of leeway as long as they're not a dumbass, but he's not in charge? so he clears his throat and apologizes into the mike, then rips the gear off and shoves it in his pocket. She's walking next to him and he grimaces. "Um. Oops."

She gives him a look that says pretty clearly that she knows about the special Hawkeye rules and peels off toward Hill's briefing room.

Coulson stands up as Clint approaches. "I don't know what--"

Clint cuts him off. "Sir, you weren't yourself. I mean, I barely even remember anything you might have done and, like, you were under the influence and plus--"

"And _plus_ , I wasn't about to say I didn't remember or try to wave off my behavior."

"What behavior." Clint is _not_ going to do anything weird like file a report (for reasons besides that this would involve paperwork; he doesn't want any shit to fall on Coulson because someone somewhere feels like Clint was harassed, which is a personal decision thankyouverymuch and if he felt taken advantage of he would say. Well, okay, no, he's _him_ so he might not, but he'd handle it. Anyway, he doesn't, so this is moot), so he's currently going with flat ignorance.

"Barton. I remember fine. You don't need to pretend anything, as Ramirez and Hill also know exactly what went on."

Clint scowls. "And?"

"And what I was going to say was, I don't know what that dickhead was thinking assuming you would be an easy target without me, and this is a quote for which I might kill him myself, making sure you didn't forget you were housebroken. We found his message drop and he didn't even care that much about the target; that was mostly just supposed to be a bonus. Really, he just wanted to corner you away from my protection. Hell, he didn't even expect to get me to say anything in particular—the loose tongue was just a side effect; mostly he cared about getting me out of the way by convincing all and sundry I had cracked. Way too much effort for no significant reward, considering there was no way you were going to let him off you."

"Jesus, what an idiot. He thinks I'm housebroken?" And, yeah, okay, Clint does feel a little of the sting he's supposed to at the insult because the line about his insufficiency as a human, his proximity to dumb animal intellect, runs a little deep even with all the conviction in Coulson's rebuttal, but he's kind of more insulted the dude didn't think Coulson would find his messages. So he adds, "Please can I pee on him?"

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Aw."

"He might interpret it as claiming behavior, and then I'd have to fight him."

Clint squinches up his face. "Uh."

"Hey, I can fight for you without it meaning you owe me anything, so." Coulson shrugs. "Cat's out in every way, Barton. Ramirez did a pretty full workup and there wasn't anything that should have changed my baseline. It just made me fucking stupid and a little hypnotized."

Clint has exactly no clue what to do with that, so he jams his hand in his pocket and gets out his comm gear and hands it over.

"Probably that goes to Hill. I'm off the clock for a mandatory post-mission recovery period."

"A whatnow? That's a thing?"

"It is."

"I don't think I've ever had one?"

"You have; I just didn't call it that because then you'd get stir crazy. But, thirty-six hours unless there's a planetary crisis, so."

Clint has gone from no idea to what seems like too many ideas, since this sort of implies a level of attention to his personal neuroses that goes maybe slightly above and beyond. He doesn't disagree with the assessment, it's just that usually in his life he's been the only one running interference for himself. 

Well, except for how Coulson usually does all the time, but that's mission, not personal. Right?

Um.

Suffice to say, he has questions.

"Is it always... I feel like sometimes we deploy again next day? Also do other people know this is a thing? Why don't I know not to pester people? Wait, do you distract me so I don't? Wait, you have to have a life besides that but you always make me, like, eat and stuff. Um. Another thing is also I probably owe Ramirez a beer so maybe I should do that in my 36 hours. You know, if you have other things you should see to?"

Coulson's lip-twitchery is on the uptick, and he shrugs. "I really don't. I'm off the clock and also because apparently when one has been under foreign influence one must requalify for a lot of shit that has to be scheduled and arranged, I am currently free as the proverbial bird. But if you want to get a beer with Dr. Ramirez, you certainly can."

"...Are you sure you're not _still_ under foreign influence?" Clint feels like the Coulson he knows works fully thirty-seven hours a day, and this guy is sort of weirdly calm. Not that Coulson isn't calm. Coulson is always pretty calm. Kind of the postcard of unflappableness. Unflappity. Whatever.

Coulson stands up and makes a gesture down the whole front of his body. "I present, _clothes_."

"Right. I mean, I noticed. I mean, I previously noticed about the not clothes, also I loaned you clothes, also yes, I see you are wearing clothes, but shouldn't you be slightly freaking out?"

And weirdly, that gets a little blush. Just a pinky-mottled glow around the tops of the ears and cheeks, but again, this is Coulson the Unflappulous. "I was. We got the bastard and, like I said, we think we got his network to boot. Still, I did spend a couple of hours sexually harassing my team and in particular you, so I may have been offered a small sedative dose to chill me out regarding anxiety related to that. I promised I'd go home and watch all the Supernanny in the world once it wore off."

Clint grins, because the Supernanny marathons actually are pretty post-mission typical. "See, now that's more like it."

Coulson turns and gestures _follow me_ , which is unnecessary since Clint's already falling into step. "To answer your previous questions, duration of downtime first of all is _as long as there are no planetary crises_ , but also is proportional to likely stress. We're assholes here at SHIELD and expect ridiculous hours and commitment, but we do understand that humans have responses. I do distract you, sort of, but mostly because you distract _me_. I do in principle have a life besides, but it mostly involves watering my cactus garden occasionally and intermittently considering getting a cat."

"I'm more of a dog guy."

"I like dogs, but cats are independent little fuckers and don't get heartbroken if you have to leave them for a few days."

Clint thinks about this. "Maybe I should get a dog and you can get a cat and then we can get them to make friends."

"How would this help?"

Clint glances sidelong at Coulson, purses his lips, and says, "Well, then if we're deployed my dog will have a buddy to keep him company."

Coulson glances back, but says nothing.

"I mean." Clint crinkles up his face. "I mean, you said, earlier. Yesterday. Whatever. You said things that made me think maybe, um."

Now he's not glancing. Now Coulson s looking straight ahead.

"Maybe we should be spending like more time together? Which I'm not sure is possible without, like, adding more...types of... ways to like. Hang out?" Now that he's getting into some post-mission let-down (okay, so probably the psychs are right that mandatory downtime is a decent idea) Clint's brain is definitely working the lock on that put-away crush stuff, and plus Coulson talked about fighting for him and he's … okay there are still sedatives, but he's obviously not, like, _impaired_ , and so everything is just kind of tumbling free. Fucking lock failure.

"Hang out, huh?" Coulson is looking again, and grinning, and okay so he knows Clint really well and probably he heard the hasp crack or something and he knows everything Clint isn't saying. Exactly. Well, whatever.

"Yeah. You know, Supernanny, tacos, couch naps, pizza, paperwork, egg rolls..."

"Anything else?"

"Hey I can't be the only one putting ideas out there."

"Supernanny was me." They arrive at the garage and Coulson points the fob to put Lola's top down, then hands the keys to Clint. Which, what the fuck. But.

"Ratio's terrible, but fine. Uh, drive each other's vehicles?" Clint grimaces because as the words leave his mouth they sound kind of dirty, but Coulson just winks. 

"Yeah, let's do that one." He gets in the passenger seat and waits for Clint to pull them into traffic. "Your place or mine?"

"What? Yours. Mine is like. Lacking in adult things." Jesus, mouth, can you not.

Coulson belly-laughs at that, and says something about how he thinks Clint is giving himself too little credit, then quiets and says, "Just to be clear, I said all sorts of things yesterday, but you don't have to--"

"Pssh." Clint shakes his head. "Sir, I grabbed you by the balls and took off my pants for you. I think you can take it as written."

"Phil, and--"

"Good point. I'm not much for sirring people I'm, you know, other thingsing."

Coulson rolls his eyes, which Clint can just detect in his peripheral vision. "We're going to have to make a list of the other things you can be thingsing, but just to be clear: Ramirez knows what happened and so does Hill, and if you don't want to be--"

"I said!"

"And you tend to want to please me."

"Ya think it's related?" Clint glances over with an eyebrow lifted. "Like, maybe wanting to please you includes wanting to suck your brain out through your dick, although maybe not that today because I burned my fucking tongue _again_ on a cup of not-even-coffee some lady in Kisumu gave me and I want to really appreciate the experience. But anyway I mean, and maybe wanting to bone you includes also wanting to—this conversation is stupid and also I don't know if I'm really Lifetime Movie material?"

"You are."

"I have never driven to Colorado and saved a stranger from selfie doom in a bookstore at Christmas with baked goods and stepchildren."

"Just as well. I don't have any children. That was plot information from a number of different movies. Each. The movies are a little formulaic."

"I. Okay? But the point stands. I'm not that guy."

"My call."

Clint pulls up in front of Coulson's building and follows him to apartment 2C, finally saying, "Far be it from me, but like, just to be clear, just because drugs made you say stupid shit doesn't mean you gotta follow through either, right?"

Coulson unlocks the front door, yanks Clint bodily into his foyer, and shoves him back against the wall, reprising the devastating kiss from 24 (give or take) hours ago, and Clint mmphs and whines a little, then stops trying to be noble and grabs Coulson's ass.

It's a great ass, which is definitely no surprise, but grabbing it, with permission and intent, is at least as disruptive to Clint's sanity and ability to breathe as the damn kiss, and he loosens his grip, slows his moves, and brings his hands up, gripping Coulson's jaw in one and wrapping the other around his back. When they eventually pull apart, he licks his lips and clears his throat. "So, I guess you're supposed to watch TV?"

Coulson barks a little laugh, then takes Clint's hand (this is shockingly awesome) and leads him to the couch. "I didn't promise not to multitask." He pushes Clint down onto the couch, thumbs the remote, and kneels between his thighs. "And I don't know if you know this about me, but I am an _excellent_ multitasker."

\--

He really, really is, and twenty minutes later Clint knows three things: he has completely lost the thread of any aspect of the current episode on the screen; Coulson has some kind of epic ninja tongue skills because oh _god_ ; and it turns out, bad, weird, confusing, terrifying, upsetting days can turn out okay.

Or better.


End file.
